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Adventures in Awkward Conversations

I, like Ben in this comic, am an introvert. I can get along just fine in any social situation where the people or places are familiar–I can even be quite charming, if I do say so myself–but if I’m alone with strangers it takes me awhile to get going. I feel like a robot that needs to recalibrate; I know what my personality is like, and jumping into a conversation with strangers before I have a chance to gauge reactions is impossible. So I tend to keep to myself or stay close to friends whenever possible. And I’ve met enough writers and artists to know that I’m not alone in this, we just handle our introverted tendencies in different ways.

What’s really bad is when I’m confronted by an aggressively extroverted person who insists on starting conversations and who is absolutely terrible at them. People who talk just to talk but aren’t really paying attention to what they’re saying or how their victim is responding. It’s almost impossible to escape from someone like that.

So… yeah. I drew a comic about it.

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Andrew Kaye (known in some circles as AK) is the creator of Ben & Winslow and other questionable comics, many of which can be found in his deviantART gallery and his Tumblr. He’s also the editor-in-chief of this magazine.